Great American Beer Festival pre-sale comes off cleanly, but sell-out takes longer

Members-only tickets to the most in-demand sessions vanished quickly – but not as quickly as last year (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)

Today’s members-only Great American Beer Festival pre-sale appeared to come off smoothly without the technical glitches that marred the last two years, but there was an interesting twist – the ticket allotment took longer than last year to disappear.

Tickets made available early for members of the American Homebrewers Association and the Brewers Association sold out in four and a half hours, compared to about 90 minutes last year, said Barbara Fusco, sales and marketing director for the Boulder-based BA.

That sounds striking on the surface but note that the main holdup was slower sales for the Saturday evening session, which has gained a reputation over the years as being rowdier and just not as attractive to hard-core beer geeks buying today’s tickets.

Tickets to the three most-sought after sessions – the Saturday afternoon members-only showcase, Friday evening and Thursday evening – were gone in 41 minutes, according to the BA’s Twitter feed, which Fusco said reflects real time. Those tickets were gone in less than 20 minutes last year.

Most relieving to the Brewers Association – no reports of the kind of technical problems with festival ticket vendor Ticketmaster that caused much angst the two previous years.

Last year, many would-be ticket-buyers reported they were unable to input their AHA or BA membership numbers on the Ticketmaster web site during the pre-sale. That followed an even bigger debacle in 2012, in which for a short time non-members were able to purchase tickets during the pre-sale on their mobile devices – the BA ended up revoking those mistakenly sold tickets.

Of this year’s pre-sale, Fusco said, “It went well. As we expected, demand was high … It did seem to be overall a smooth and error-free ticket sales for most of our members. We didn’t have any complaints or notices of any technical problem.”

We asked earlier on Twitter how things were going for consumers. One would-be purchaser reported Ticketmaster timeouts, which are typical for any high-demand event. This person found similar …

@First_Drafts was logged in before they went on sale and didn't get the Thursday tickets. Endless message saying high demand try again

The BA puts a cap on how many tickets it sells in the pre-sale for general sessions, although it does not disclose specific figures. The event will welcome a total of 49,000 participants over the four sessions Oct. 2-4 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver – the same as in previous years. The group does not disclose how many tickets are actually sold. Those attendance numbers include brewery reps, press and others in addition to ticket-buyers.

So is there anything to read into the ticket madness seeming to temper a bit? Have members of the AHA and BA grown weary of the GABF routine? There’s been talk in recent years about a backlash against the festival by beer nerds who think it’s grown just too big, popular and inaccessible – especially with the addition of other great beer events around town that week.

Note, too, that things slowed down even though BA and AHA membership has grown. Fusco said there are more than 45,000 members of the AHA, up from around 40,300 at the same time last year.

To be sure, some perspective is needed. GABF tickets used to be available on the day-of, and as recently as 2011 the event took 10 days to sell out. So demand, like Fusco said, remains high.

Asked about the slightly slower sales, Fusco said, “It’s early to assess or make any assumptions from that. The fact of the matter is, I’m not certain what to make of that. We will have discussions about it.”

Fusco added that the BA is proud of the Saturday night session, and suggested its poor reputation among some beer drinkers is rooted in a reality that is years or even a decade old. She said that more brewers are attending the final session, and behavior has improved. There are other reasons to skip Saturday night, too – first and foremost, if you snagged a ticket for Saturday afternoon.

As for those who want to be rid of Ticketmaster … the BA is in the final year of its contract with the ticket behemoth to handle GABF sales. Fusco noted that the event is “incredibly large and complex,” which limits the number of vendors who can handle the task. But she said as always, the BA would evaluate the situation, as it does with all things GABF.

Hint: This is the worst possible time to pick up a GABF ticket on the secondary market. There’s still the public sale tomorrow. And the last couple of years, tickets at or near face value have been easily obtainable on the street as the sessions begin.

You can drink a heck of a lot of great beer for the cost of a GABF ticket. Without fighting crowds and paying for parking. Like Comic Con and Burning Man this is a once great event ruined by its own success.

I would like to attend this thing one of these years, but coming from Israel, it takes long-range planning and what seems to be a lot of hassle just to buy the tickets. Maybe some year the organizers will decide to invite beer bloggers as guest observers!!
Doug Greenerhttp://www.IsraelBrewsAndViews.blogspot.com

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